Christmas Eve, 2009

Thematic

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Seeing Christ in Christmas”

Merry Christmas! We’ve been reminded tonight that Christmas is about Christ. But sometimes it’s hard to see Christ in Christmas. We’ve wrapped Him up pretty tight in all our Christmas paraphernalia. So as Christmas is the time to do a lot of unwrapping, I thought tonight it might be a good idea for us to do some unwrapping ourselves – unwrapping Christ in Christmas.

Christmas does come to us wrapped up in all sorts of traditional, commercial, and secular packaging. But a lot of this packaging – maybe even what seems like some of the most commercial and secular of the packaging – can reveal, rather than conceal, the true gift of this holy season – if you know what to look for. As author Gene Veith has written, “Even in its most secular manifestations Christmas is a testimony of Christ.”

Take for example the Christmas tree – that most ubiquitous of all symbols of Christmas. Practi-cally everybody – believer and unbeliever alike – celebrates the birth of Christ by putting up a Christmas tree in their living room, even if they don’t know or acknowledge that that’s what they’re doing. Because the truth is, the Christmas tree is a symbol of the hope of eternal life that we have through the coming of Christ into the world. Think about it. We bring an evergreen into our homes right at the darkest point in the year – in the darkness and death of winter – and we decorate it with lights, and usually place a star on top. Why? Because “light has shined in the darkness,” and “those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.” “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And men were lead to Him and to eternal life in Him by the star the shone over the place where He was born.

Actually, the modern Christmas tree seems to have originated in Germany during the Middle Ages. In a medieval play about Adam and Even, a fir tree, hung with apples (called a “Paradise tree”) was used to represent the Tree of Life. But then, as a part of their own family piety, German families started setting up Paradise trees in their homes on December 24^th, the feast of Adam and Eve. On it they hung wafers which symbolized the bread of Holy Communion by which we have communion with the body of Christ and eternal life in Him. And since Christmas immediately followed, they started decorating the tree with candles to represent Christ as the Light of the World. And so in this way the Christmas tree became a symbol of how, by spiritually feeding upon Christ in Holy Communion, we’re given to eat of the true Tree of Life – Jesus Christ Himself. You see? We should see Christ in the Christmas tree.

But we can see Him even beyond the Christmas tree. Another common Christmas decoration that we see, even in places where there’s a concerted effort to take Christ out of Christmas, is the holly bough or the holly wreath. Yet even these seemingly secular decorations point to Christ. In Germany the word for holly is “Christdorn,” because the thorns are seen as symbolizing Christ’s crown of thorns, and the red berries the beads of His blood.

An old English Christmas carol, the Holly and the Ivy, celebrate the holly as this symbol pointing to Christ:

“Of all the trees that are in the wood,

The holly bears the crown…

The holly bears a blossom

As white as the lily flower,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

To be our sweet savior.

The holly bears a berry

As red as any blood,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

To do poor sinners good.

The holly bears a prickle

As sharp as any thorn

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

On Christmas day in the morn.”

You see, even in what may seem like the most innocuous and secular of Christmas decorations, you can’t take Christ out of Christmas. They all point to Him.

But what about the tradition of giving and receiving of gifts? Can we see Christ even in this, the most commercialized aspect of Christmas? Again Gene Veith writes, in an article, by the way, with the very interesting title, “The God of gift:… a defense of the ‘commercialization’ of Christmas”: “At the heart of the way Christmas is celebrated is the receiving and giving of gifts. One could hardly imagine a more apt practice to proclaim the meaning of Christmas, why the birth of Christ is such ‘good news,’ and how the Christian faith is so unique. Christianity itself is all about receiving and giving gifts.”

Receiving gifts that are unearned – and sometimes underserved – merely because we are loved, points us to the great truth that we receive our salvation purely as a gift of God’s free grace. Jesus Christ Himself is God’s supreme gift to mankind – to us. But even on top of the gift of salvation, God heaps upon us His good gifts: our families and friends; our spouses and our homes; our vocations; the beauty of creation, and the capacity to enjoy it; and the list could go on and on. And so, yes, it is fitting that we receive a heap of gifts on Christmas, taken from under the Christmas tree, to remind us that all good gifts come down from the Father of Lights in and through the great gift of His Son.

But giving gifts too – going out and spending a lot of money, feeling the pinch in your pocketbook to give nice things to the ones you love – this also is a fitting reminder to us that the gift of salvation does not come to us without cost. It came at a huge cost to God – the cost of His own Son. And so “choosing a gift for someone – and paying its price – is just a shadow of what God has done and continues to do for each of us” (Veith).

And so even in this, the most commercialized aspect of the holiday, we can still see Christ in Christmas. Even in this Christ can’t be completely removed from Christmas. Ultimately the exchanging of gifts represents the great exchange Christ has made with us: His righteousness in exchange for our sin; His life for our death; His blessing for our cursing.

So as we enter into the celebration of this wonderful, holy season, may our eyes be open to see the Christ of Christmas, even if that means we need to take a closer look at some of the ways He comes wrapped to us. We can still see and receive the true gift of Christmas in all the wrapping. +